Behind the Curtain at TCG

And I'll be blogging from the FDP meeting

I should have noted that I'll be blogging from the FDP meeting tomorrow, as long as there's a wifi network available. (And there'd better be or the hotel will have a riot on its hands!)

See you at the FDP meeting tomorrow! Although you may miss me...

I'm going to the FDP meeting tomorrow at the Fair Lakes Hyatt in Fairfax, VA. If you're there, look for the bespectacled fellow furiously typing on a Macbook. Wait... That describes about a third of the audience. Okay... Look for the bespectacled fellow furiously typing on a Macbook who has very short hair and the air of someone who's constantly harried. Wait... That describes half the cast of "Lost".

Oh dear.

Well, anyway, I'll be there and would love to chat with any reader of the blog. If you recognize me (by some miracle, because apparently I'm totally nondescript), say hi!

Git – Fast Version Control System

Git is an open source version control system designed to handle very large projects with speed and efficiency, but just as well suited for small personal repositories; it is especially popular in the open source community, serving as a development platform for projects like the Linux Kernel, WINE or X.org.

It's very "distributed friendly".  Everyone is their own branch, basically.  Offline development is a cinch!  You can also be confident you are never going to mess up the trunk, if there was one.  The tutorial is short and worth taking a look, at http://git.or.cz.

Transparency Act Subaward Pilot - updated details

This meeting will be on May 14th, from 2-4pm. The call-in details have been updated. (If you subscribe to the Grants Management Events Calendar you'd already have the updated details in your calendar! Click here to automagically subscribe to the calendar using Outlook/iCal/Lightning/your preferred calendaring application.) Here's the skinny:

There is a new call-in number and code, thanks to the support of Terry Hurst and HHS. If you have not already registered for this call, please do so now at: TheNGP@aol.com.

Those who plan to attend in person, must register for security reasons. We will meet at Potomac Center Plaza, 550 12th St, SW, Room 7105.

* Use L'Enfant Plaza Metro Exit, walk up D St SW to 12th St SW, or
* Smithsonian Metro, Exit Independence Ave. SW, walk down 12th St SW

TELECONFERENCE: 1-877-985-0932, Participant Code: 895294

NIH seeking an "Electronic Grant Applications" system

Back in March NIH released a sources sought notice for "Electronic Grant Applications." You can review it here. This notice asked industry to submit capability statements for the analysis and development of a system that would enable grantees to submit grant applications for complex programs (such as P01, U54, and P30) using the Web. This is a very interesting requirement because it would effectively implement a Web interface for submitting grant applications, running parallel to Grants.gov's e-forms/system-to-system interface and, indeed, utilizing that system-to-system interface. (Full disclosure: TCG submitted a response to this notice.)

When HHS first solicited bids to develop Grants.gov in 2001 they did not request development of a Web interface, preferring the e-form solution for many good reasons. We were part of a team that proposed meeting that requirement and developing a Web interface, because we felt this would be important and useful to grantees and grantors alike. In retrospect, we shouldn't have done that (I say that for good reason: we didn't win the work by essentially over-scoping a project with a feature that the government had clearly dismissed), and we repeated the sin in 2006 when the Grants.gov contract was recompeted. However, we've always thought that a Web interface would be an essential part of the overall solution.

This sources sought suggests that NIH and (I suspect) Grants.gov agrees with this. In fact, I think they've always agreed but have been constrained by politics and funding, not to mention the risks posed by storing grant applicants' works-in-progress on a government system. (These applications can contain very sensitive data; who would be liable if they were accidentally erased, or lost, or released to the wrong people?) Development of an electronic grant applications system like this would circumvent the complexity of Grants.gov e-forms solution -- although that should be a continuing part of the overall solution because it provides distinct advantages over a Web-based solution, such as offline working -- and choosing the NIH's complex programs as a starting point is a brilliant insight. It demands that we start with the riskiest, most difficult problem, the solution to which will coincidentally "break the back" of all the other programs.

Does this mean Grants.gov is irrelevant? Absolutely not. Does it mean Grants.gov is less important? Again, I'd have to say no, because this solution will use Grants.gov's system-to-system interface and the technical products they've delivered, such as the SF424 schemas, etc.

It does suggest that government intends to take on more responsibility for providing technologies that will support grant applicants, and that can be adopted broadly across government. These are both great end-results.

What do you think about this development? Comments can be submitted (anonymously if you wish) below.

NIH eRA GMLOB appeal granted

I just got wind of this notice from NIH's Nexus newsletter. It says it all. This is excellent news for all the agencies concerned!

eRA Grants Management Line of Business Appeal Granted

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently granted NIH’s appeal allowing NIH and our agency partners (AHRQ, CDC, FDA, SAMHSA and the VA) to continue to use the eRA system for end-to-end electronic research administration. Had the appeal been denied, NIH and our partners would have been required to align with a grants management system of one of the three established consortia leads [the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services – Administration for Children and Families (ACF) or the National Science Foundation (NSF)].

The NIH was a service provider long before the advent of the Grants Management Line of Business, being named an HHS Center of Excellence a number of years ago. The Department of Veterans Affairs joined last year as NIH’s first non-HHS partner to use a suite of eRA tools to support application receipt through closeout. The NIH also has 29 components from approximately 14 agencies using iEdison for their invention-reporting needs.

The OMB decision to allow agencies to continue to use eRA comes with responsibilities, including requirements to submit frequent reports to demonstrate activities and progress towards consolidation.

NIH has also had preliminary discussions with the NSF to explore opportunities for joint efforts to better serve shared customers. While we will continue to explore opportunities with other agencies, be assured that eRA will continue to service our current partners and work towards the overall NIH mission of advancing science and improving human health.

NIH procuring grants systems engineering help

One of the larger, if not the largest, grants management system in government is run by the NIH. It's called the Electronic Research Administration (eRA...yes, with a small 'e') and you can read all about it here. NIH is currently recompeting the systems engineering services contract that supports it; the FedBizOpps posting is here. (Full disclosure: We currently work on several projects around eRA.)

The NIH grants process is very complex and the systems that support it share that complexity. Consequently, eRA has always led the way in many aspects of federal grants management systems. iEdison is the government's only inter-agency post-award grants reporting system, for example, while the eRA Commons has (I think) the most intricate and complex user and institution management functionality of any agency. (Another disclosure: TCG designed and built iEdison.) NIH tends to face common challenges before the majority of agencies, and has to adapt and develop systems rapidly as a consequence, often demonstrating some interesting innovations as a result.

Where eRA goes, others tend to follow, both in terms of process and technology. So this is a project and procurement worth watching.

(I'm catching up on all my blogging this morning. Can you tell?!)

AWARD - off-the-shelf grant evaluation software

Thanks to Matt Jillings at Compusearch, I recently met John Thompson and Kristen Chhim of Commerce Decisions, an English company that produces procurement source selection and performance monitoring systems for the British government, called AWARD. (By the way, I find myself intensely irritated that the English call IT "ICT" because, apparently, information has to be distinguished from communication technologies. Tsch! The English, eh? We're a funny breed.) Anyway, I saw a demo of this software because it's now being used by a British education agency to select grant ("funding" -- there they go again!) recipients.

The system can manage peer review processes or more simple functions like yes/no scoring criteria for less evaluation-intensive awards. A Web-based grant application evaluation system isn't new, of course -- we've developed one or two in our time -- but this is interesting because it's an off-the-shelf system that can be bought on a per-program or enterprise basis, with various options in between. And it doesn't try to be more than a review system; no ambitions to control the whole procurement or grant lifecycle here!

So if you're an agency with a particularly complex review process on just one or two programs, for example, you can use AWARD for just those programs, avoiding the cost of developing something or buying licenses you just don't need. It can also be hosted for you, too, which makes things even easier. Or you can integrate it with other grant lifecycle modules in your own environment.

Neither I nor TCG have any skin in this particular game, although I could see us integrating this for some clients. As it is, I would certainly advise anyone interested in peer review to take a look at AWARD.

GMLOB alliances: The story updated

Back in March I posted about the various MOUs signed between agencies and GMLOB providers. Alice Stewart of Management Concepts has been researching this, and I've been very remiss in not updating the list. So I'm fixing that now! Additions are in italics.

HHS/ACF GrantSolutions.gov
Corporation for National and Community Service, Denali Commission, State, Transportation, Treasury, EPA, HHS/Administration on Aging, HHS/Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, HHS/CMS, HHS/HRSA, HHS/IHS, HHS/Office of Public Health and Science, IMLS, and USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service

NSF Research.gov
USDA CSREES (listed as "in discussion" with NASA, Air Force, Army, Navy, DARPA, NGA, DTRA, and DoD Washington Headquarters Services in January 2008)

Education G5
None known but heard rumors that several are in discussion with Education

The one major change here is that the Veteran's Administration is no longer listed under HHS/ACF, but the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is mentioned on the NIH eRA Web site, as is HHS's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the Centers for DIsease COntrol and Prevention (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

Details are rather scant on what's happening on GMLOB right now. By March 31st, agencies had to submit to OMB their plans for migration to GMLOB providers, but I'm not hearing a lot about what's going to happen next. All rather mysterious!

Office 2007 converter for OSX

After receiving a lot of files with the dreaded ".docx" filename extension, I discovered that Microsoft has a converter available for OSX that transforms these Windows Office 2007 files into Mac Office 2004 format. It's not perfect (it's in beta right now) and doesn't work on everything, but worth having available. You can get it here. At the bottom of the screen, in the bottom-right-most window, scroll down to the "English (.dmg)" file. Download that, double-click it, and install the application, and then drag-and-drop files onto it to convert them. You can also convert a batch of files at one time using the menu commands.